On
24th of April at 2 PM by the St. Roch church there was supposed to
benan anti-fascist demonstration. The increased activity of police
wasnobserved in the city from the early morning hours. Around noon the
groups of fascists started to cruise around the streets of the city.
About 1 PM fascists gathered in the group of approximately 30-40
persons at the assembly point of the demonstration.
Some of them were chased away by the anti-fascists
whilst those who tried to hide in the neighboring blocks of flats were
detained by the police. By each of detained fascists police found at
least one knife!!! It is worth mentioning here that the local
neo-fascists are well known for using knifes while attacking
foreigners, anti-fascists and football fans. A young supporter of
Jagiellonia Białystok – Adrian who had been murdered a few years ago
may be an example.
During the meeting near the
church of St Roch a short fight between fascists from Blood&Honour
(B&H) and activists heading to the assembly point took place. The
neo-fascists attacked people going to the demonstration but they were
repulsed, and only the fast intervention of the police saved them from
the lynch. In the time of 30 seconds (!) the police went into action
arresting everybody who was in the vicinity at the time. Police
cordoned off all the people that were gathered at the place of
demonstration even though it was several dozens meters form where the
incident took place, and they disbanded the demonstration before it
even started. All the people were detained, handcuffed and took to the
yard of the local ‘prevention’. During that police kept beating and
offending the detained people, they also ascribed items found on the
streets to the accidental persons, made up stories than never took
place such as – ‘he attacked the policeman’ etc.
The
majority of the detained anti-fascists (70 to 100 persons according to
different estimates) were taken to one place. There, most of them were
put at the yard and surrounded by the police. Three arrested
neo-fascists from the Blood&Honour group with injured heads got off
one of the police cars. Artur Wysocki pseudonym Wiatrak and Marcin
Łukaszuk were recognized among them. It was easy to notice that they
enjoyed privileges that were not available for the rest of detained
people. They greeted some of the policemen by the handshake, they could
smoke cigarettes, move freely at the yard, they also watched with the
policemen the mobile phones taken away from the anti-fascists. One of
the highly placed policemen was taking photos of the antifascists with
his private mobile phone and showed them to the fascists from B&H.
All anti-fascists had to prove their identity, they were searched and
filmed. 13 persons were read out and taken to the police station.
These
were completely random peoples who seemed more suspicious because: They
wanted they laws to be respected and demanded that loudly, they had
with them pepper sprays or the anti-fascists banners. The rest of the
detained were accused of not dispersing on the police demand and they
were given fines. Some of them refused to accept the fines, because
nobody called them to leave the place of a legal demonstration, and
what is more, police blocked people in the way they could not move
freely and leave the place. At the police station the protocols of
search and arrest of 13 anti-fascists were drawn up. All of those13
people were put in custody. They were interrogated the next day. They
were charged with participation in a fight in a public place and
released on bail of different amounts. The prosecutor applied also the
police supervision over them.
The support is needed.
Because
of the charges against anti-fascists the financial resources for the
legal aid will be needed. Since there are 13 (!) persons accused and
the legal consequences may be very serious as the mentioned charge is
punishable even by 8 years of imprisonment we have to collect a
considerable amount of money. We count on solidarity of all people
supporting our activities. In this way we can also show how numerous
and strong we are and join actively in the anti-fascists movement Let’s
organize benefit concerts, events, parties and whatever else comes to
your mind!
Please transfer the collected means to the account below:
BZWBK SA 50 1090 1447 0000 0001 0910 8536
Stowarzyszenie Inicjatyw Społecznych Ulica, ul. Pułaskiego 21a,
Poznań, POLAND
SWIFT:WBK PPL PP
Transfer title: "pomoc prawna"
Thank you very much for your help on the behalf of the accused persons.
Antifa – Polska
